Hallows and Pathos
by Perspicacity
Summary: A mistake by a dying man drives Hermione to obsession as she seeks to unlock the secrets of the Deathly Hallows. Harry, wanting only peace, tries to rid himself of the taint of death. Two friends clash in a tragic struggle for identity and destiny.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Story based on characters and plot owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. I wrote this for pleasure; no money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Update: This story won Best Overall and Best Drama in the SIYE Deathly Hallows Challenge.

* * *

**Hallows and Pathos**

by Perspicacity

* * *

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore dipped his quill into a crystal inkpot and scratched a shaky line onto the parchment before him. He blotted the ink, then blew on it, a habit picked up a century before. Atop his desk were three items next to a carved, wooden box. Next to it was an envelope addressed to his brother, Aberforth, executor of his will.

He glanced at the clock--the conventional one, not the one with twenty-three hands. The time was seven thirty; Harry would be by in half an hour for their session together. He placed the first item, his Deluminator, into the box, then followed with a weathered copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, one which had been gifted to him by Gellert so long ago.

He hesitated for a moment, then removed the book from the box and opened it to The Tale of the Three Brothers. On a nearby perch, Fawkes ruffled his feathers and gave the man a disapproving look.

Dumbledore sighed. "I fear, Fawkes. I fear in my heart for the future and that I've not done enough. They shall require all the assistance I can provide." He removed a slender wand the color of ivory from the breast pocket of his robes.

Fawkes, seeing this, trilled a discordant note.

Dumbledore chuckled sadly. "Dear friend, I share your reticence over compulsion charms and I agree that Miss Granger is a most capable witch, but surely you do not think it indulgent of a dying man to help matters along a bit?"

Fawkes squawked and fidgeted.

"Then I shall add disappointing you to my long list of failures."

He closed his eyes and fought again with the dark desires that had plagued his soul of late. Since donning Cadmus Peverell's Ring, the compulsion to seize the third Hallow from his protegé and unite the Hallows had increased manifold, becoming almost irresistible in these late days. He knew that as his health continued to fade, his resolve would crumble and he would be driven to violence or madness. It was fortunate, "sheer dumb luck" as his Deputy was fond of saying, that the Headmaster had asked the young man to carry his cloak with him at all times, as it removed his temptation to pilfer it from the boy's belongings.

Phoenix song, bright and soothing, dispelled the malice from the wizard's thoughts. A minute later, the Headmaster sighed and nodded his thanks to his familiar.

"I only hope you can forgive me someday, Harry." He incanted a mild compulsion charm, one that would ensure that the tale received the requisite attention from the brightest of the three in the dark days ahead. Motes of white glittered about the book and a faint brace of silver runes faded into being at the bottom of the worn pages.

Unseen in the dim light of the office, the ring upon the man's finger started to pulse with a faint glow and smoky tendrils formed in the air. As the Headmaster's spell ended, they settled upon the page and the third-to-last rune changed in the subtlest of ways.

The world would never be the same.

* * *

Hermione retrieved her wand from the receptionist and stood in the queue for the lift as she ran through her mental checklist one last time. She fretted with the edge of her robes and repositioned the battered satchel on her shoulder, wondering again if she should have replaced it for the interview. Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to part with it, her trusted companion since her O.W.L. year at Hogwarts.

She opened the bag and checked its contents, ensuring that everything was within reach: her notebook, a filled application for employment with the Ministry, O.W.L. scores, N.E.W.T. results a month old, Order of Merlin citation, copies of the articles she had written on the nature of magic... her copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. She reached into the satchel and retrieved the book, thumbing it open automatically to the page she'd committed to memory so long ago.

She'd debated with herself over which branch of the Ministry to join after Hogwarts. Unlike her fiancé, who had joined the Auror Academy at the first opportunity, she had organized her possibilities, listed the pros and cons of each, and, after a careful selection process, had narrowed her choices to two: Researcher within the Department of Mysteries and Member of the Restructuring Commission for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Initially, her heart was set on the latter, with the power to enact reforms of the type she'd dreamed of when she had founded S.P.E.W., but a letter from a researcher with the Department of Mysteries had changed all that.

The bell rang and she stepped onto the lift with several Ministry employees, all of whom were staring at her, yet she paid them no mind. Her eyes fell upon the words of the children's tale and, as had happened so often when she thought of the Hallows, the rest of the world faded into irrelevancy. There was something seductive about the story that she just couldn't let rest.

"Floor nine: Department of Mysteries." Alone on the lift and still reading, she stepped into a large, circular room, all in black. Several identical, handle-less doors lined the walls and blue candle flame flickered in sconces set high between them. A silent Lumos lit the end of her wand. Without looking up, she walked up to the second door to the right of where she had entered and touched her index finger to its smooth surface.

"Shinigami," she whispered, saying the pass-phrase she'd been given, and the door creaked open into a large, dimly lit, rectangular room. Concentric stone tiers led down to the center, where a wide arch stood with a tattered curtain. She sat upon one of the upper tiers and continued to read, knowing that her appointment wasn't for several minutes yet.

An indefinite period of time passed and she heard a rustle of fabric behind her.

A voice broke the silence. "An interesting book, is it not?" She looked up, seeing an ancient man with a wrinkled, colorless face, white hair, and milky eyes. He sat beside her on the stone bench and gently pried the book from her hands. She instinctively gripped tighter for a moment, then released, feeling a little foolish with herself.

He placed square pince-nez upon his nose and read, "The Tale of the Three Brothers." He tilted his head forward and fixed her with a stare over the rims, his eyebrows raised. "Do you know what this is about, child?"

"The Hallows," she said.

"Indeed. So you are Miss Granger." He offered his hand.

Hermione shook the man's hand. "Yes sir. Spellmaster Brocklebury, it is an honor to meet you, sir."

"Call me Davos, and the honor is mine, to meet one of those who succeeded in uniting the Hallows. So I gather you found our offer intriguing?"

"Very much so, sir. Ever since I heard of the Deathly Hallows, I've been very interested in learning more about them."

He patted her on the hand. "You shall make a worthy apprentice, Miss Granger. Together, we shall uncover the greatest mystery of the cosmos, the very nature of Death itself." He handed her back the book and stood up formally. "Come, let me show you your new office and my library, the likes of which you will find nowhere else in the world."

At his mention of the library, whatever reservations she may have had were forgotten.

* * *

"I got your owl, Hermione," Harry said, kissing his friend on the cheek. Her skin felt slightly oily on his lips, a sign of her having cleaned too often with charms and not a proper bath. Ron was right—she'd moved from merely working "too hard" to "far more than is healthy." He set mugs of Butterbeer on the table and cast Muffliato and Notice-Me-Not spells about them. Although it was mid-afternoon and the pub was mostly empty, the delicacy of their conversation required it.

Hermione took the mug and sipped sweet froth from the warm drink. "Thanks."

Harry nodded and took a seat across from the witch, his arms folded.

Hermione folded her own arms in reply and stared back at him. "It's about time, you know. I've been trying to contact you for weeks. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were avoiding me."

"I've been busy." He shrugged, then gestured to her wrinkled robes. "It looks like you have too."

"Well of course. I'm on the verge of a major breakthrough, one that will change the way the world looks at magic of the soul..."

He raised his hands to stop her, knowing what would happen if he let her get started. "Spare me. I had enough to do with that soul magic dross after Tom."

She harrumphed. "It's not 'dross'; it's real and it's about healing. If anyone's in need of what this can do, it's you." She reached for his hand. Her skin felt cold and a little clammy. "We've all been affected by Voldemort's horcruxes--me, Ron, Ginny from the diary... You worst of all."

"I get by okay," he said, looking away.

"It's not about 'getting by.' It's about leading a full life. We deserve that much after what we've done."

Harry sipped his Butterbeer in silence, then nodded.

"Ginny says you've been restless and preoccupied. She's worried about you." Harry started to protest, but she interrupted, "...We all are."

He smirked. "Pot, meet kettle."

"Touché. She's just concerned. Anything you want to talk about?"

"I'm fine, really. It'll pass—it's... nothing I haven't dealt with before." He pulled his hand back. "On that subject, Ron says you're working too hard again."

She crossed her arms again. "Well, I have to. This is really important."

Harry steeled himself to raise the point as he'd promised his best mate and partner. "More important than your health? Than your marriage? You know Ron's a forgiving bloke and all..." She snorted. "Well, maybe not. But you can't just neglect him. It's not fair to him... or to you."

She was pensive, her eyes on the table in front of her, and she squeezed the leather-bound book on her lap. When she spoke, it was little more than a whisper. "If what I've discovered is true, it's more important than any of us. I--I think I can heal us. All of us. Your cloak and the other Hallows are the key, I'm sure of it."

Harry stared at her, then placed a small box upon the table. "Against my better judgment, I've brought it." Her eyes had a flicker of hunger and she reached for it a little too quickly, but Harry slid it back from her. "But it's dangerous. I didn't realize before when we were in school, but it is, so you have to agree to some ground rules. Nobody but you can study it and when you're not using it, you need to put it back in this box. And, you can't bring it near any of the other Hallows."

A brief flash of annoyance crossed her face before she schooled her expression into neutrality. "Why not?" she asked. "The interaction among the Hallows could reveal..."

"This is all a mistake. Forget it—I'm taking it back. You shouldn't be near the Hallows; nobody should. You just don't understand their nature or the danger they represent."

"I'd like to think I know better than anyone, Harry. It's my field of research, after all," she huffed. "Besides, have you listened to yourself? You've never healed, Harry, from V-Voldemort or the horcruxes. You need this."

"I'd rather suffer than see you corrupted." He reached for the box.

She slapped her hand on top of the box, stopping him from taking it. "I could still get it, you know. The law is going to pass."

He answered coolly, "I don't care if your ruddy law passes or not. I'll violate it to keep the Hallows to myself if I have to. Swear to my terms or neither you nor anyone else will see the bloody things again, 'soul healing' or not. It'd be for the best, I assure you."

There was an awkward silence and they eventually broke eye contact. Harry looked around, relieved that the charms were effective and that none of the other patrons were staring at them.

Hermione raised her wand. "I, Hermione Granger, swear on my magic that I will not knowingly bring the cloak into contact with the other Hallows created by the brothers Peverell and that I will uphold the other restrictions Harry Potter has placed upon its study." Harry lifted his hand from the box and she took it, holding it close to her chest.

"You can't be so preoccupied with death that you forget to live, Hermione." He tossed a few Sickles onto the table and walked away.

* * *

Harry backed away from the headstone, his feet crunching on the gravel before the Headmaster's memorial. Even two years after Tom was killed, he continued to find himself standing before the tomb with a blank spot in his memory on he had arrived. His fists clenched as he fought the urge to exhume the body and recover what was rightfully his. He checked the wards, ones he'd commissioned as much to protect the tomb from himself as from vandals. They were intact, for now anyway.

A familiar wash of darkness passed over him and he felt a chill in his heart. The episodes had started that night, the night he died, and marked a silent, private struggle against the worst aspects of himself. Private except for her. Only his beloved knew of the temptation and the battle he faced to maintain sanity. He knew his soul was tainted with an evil, ancient and pernicious, that dwarfed the influence of Tom's little mark. Had the world realized how near he was to the precipice, they'd curse his name rather than toast it. He considered yet again taking his life and embracing the peace of his passing versus struggle against the mantle of Death begging to be claimed.

An owl ghosted overhead, wings canted to bend its glide into a wide spiral. Harry was reminded of the golden eyes of his lost familiar. The cold ache of loss brought a stinging to his eyes and a faint ticking sound to his head.

He blinked. In the back of his mind, he felt a presence, that of the black, winged being that had haunted his dreams.

The raptor plummeted from the sky, feathers trailing behind in a streamer of grey. It struck the ground and exploded into nothingness. A solitary breast feather floated to Harry and landed upon his shoulder. He blew on it and it suspended for a second into the breeze, then crumbled into dust. He shook his head, dispelling the vision—or at least what he hoped was a vision.

A moment later, or perhaps an eternity, he saw that he was in the Forbidden Forest, feet gliding through the underbrush on their own accord. A breeze rustled through the leaves of a tall willow beside him. As he watched, its limbs dropped drying leaves and the branches dessicated, then bleached to white, as bony fingers grasped for the sky.

He swallowed heavily.

His feet continued, following a narrow path that he knew that he himself had made, then stopped several paces into a clearing. Below was a glint of gold, his hand reaching for it.

"No!" Harry gritted his teeth, arresting his shaking fingers inches from the treasure. A swirl of black threads splayed out from it and struck him in his torso. His throat tightened and pain arced through his heart. A tug on his hand pulled him violently to his knees before the ring. It became his focus, the urge to claim it and its power, the center of his world. He curled his fingers into a fist and wrenched control of his body from the item, stumbling to his feet. He stepped back a pace, then another. Perspiration soaked his shirt as he stepped to the edge of the clearing, his limbs moving slowly, as if through treacle.

From his robes, he withdrew a golden box he had been carrying for this purpose. Setting it before him, he drew his wand. Moments later, he levitated the stone and secured it behind a blood seal.

* * *

Ginny stretched the sleeve ends of a loose-fitting jumper over the palms of her hands and lifted a mug of tea to her mouth. She looked out the window at the sapling, now almost four years old, that the family had planted the day Fred had been laid to rest. This day always brought her thoughts to her brother, the one who had convinced her, when she was three, to use Spell-o-Seal to glue her thumb to her navel...

"Ginny dear?" her mother said just as she started to sip, startling her into burning her mouth and spilling onto her lap.

"Mum!" She stood and blotted at her leggings with a tea towel.

"Sorry," the older woman said, turning around and wiping floured hands on her apron. "Can you do me a favor and get a tin of peaches from the cellar? I always make cobbler for Fred on his birthday."

"Um, okay," she said, mostly to herself. Her mother had turned back to the counter where she charmed a pair of knives to peel and slice carrots. She started humming as she kneaded the dough for the tarts.

A minute later, peaches in hand, Ginny passed her father in the hallway outside the kitchen.

"She's not any better?" she whispered. Her words were a statement as much as a question.

"She has her good days and her bad." Arthur ran his fingers through thinning auburn hair. "This is a bad one."

"Any word from St. Mungos?"

He sighed and shook his head. "Her healers still can't identify the curse that struck her that night. They say that at this point, it's not clear how much is the curse anymore and how much is her own compensation... I hope you never have to bury a child. Nothing compares to that."

Ginny hugged her father. "She thinks Fred's coming to dinner."

"I know."

"It's been _four years_, Dad. George isn't even coming. He can't take another birthday like the last one, when Mum called him Fred all night."

"Oh dear."

She rested a hand beneath her navel, where she had the start of a bulge. "Ron's on duty tonight. Hermione said she'd be here, but I sort of doubt it with how she's been lately." She looked concerned for a moment. "Harry will come, though."

"Really?" her father asked, surprised, then said a little too quickly, "How is he?"

She sighed. "Under a lot of stress and it's getting worse."

"Work-related?"

"Sort of," she equivocated. "Can you help with Mum when he's here?"

He smiled weakly. "I'll do what I can. I appreciate you're being here, especially today." She looked at her father and saw a tired man, one driven nearly spare with his wife's needs. She hugged him tightly, then went to the kitchen with a fake smile plastered on her face.

Her mother smiled back, eyes twinkling, and she took the peaches and set them on a counter where a magical opener worked at the tin.

"Thank you. You're such a nice girl." She pinched Ginny's cheek and winked. "You'll make a lucky boy a great wife someday."

Ginny swallowed. "Mum? I'm engaged, remember?" She held up the ring Harry had given her and her other hand went to her abdomen. She felt a tickle of life inside her; at four months, she was beginning to show.

"Engaged! When did this happen?"

She spoke very slowly, her heart breaking at the confusion she saw on her mother's face. "Three months ago. You were there, remember?" A stubborn tear fell from her eye.

"Oh... oh!" she said, pretending to remember. "And when were you going to get married to..."

"Harry."

"Harry! Oh, that's wonderful. I'm so happy for you." The elder woman hugged her daughter, then blotted her eyes with the back of her wrist. "When were you and Harry going to be married?"

"June second." She paused for a moment. "We're going to hold the ceremony at Harry's grandfather's cottage. Just like we discussed?" Tears dropped from her eyelashes.

"What? Not here?" Molly asked, her arms akimbo, and Ginny groaned at having to fight this battle again.

Arthur came in and sat on the corner of the table. "It's because it will be a small, private ceremony, only a few of us there. We felt it was best with... how things have been," he said.

"Nonsense. This is our daughter's wedding, Arthur." She flicked her wand and summoned a parchment and quill. "Of course it's going to be beautiful. Now we need to get the flowers and arrange a cake and decorations-- Great Aunt Muriel's tiara will look lovely on you, dear. Who do you want for your bridesmaids?"

"Luna and Mabel."

"Only two? And Mabel Pearlybutton? Not Hermione?" she asked, confused.

"Hermione is married to Ron now," Arthur said, giving his daughter a look.

Molly's mouth gaped open as she processed this, then her face turned red. "That rascal! I should box him about the ears, eloping with such a nice girl! What would her parents say?"

Ginny blurted out, "Mum, you were here, you were at their bloody wedding! How could you not remember--it was outside in the garden..."

Molly blinked, looking outside at the window, her confused eyes falling on Fred's sapling. "It was?" Her husband stood and took her hand. A tear rolled down her cheek. "Why don't I remember any of this, Arthur?"

"Please, dear, why don't we sit down and look at the photographs again. I'm sure they'll help your memory." He tried to lead her into the sitting room, but she resisted. At that moment, the Floo flared and Harry stumbled out of the green flame, his mood dark and preoccupied.

"Harry!" Molly said, rushing forward and hugging him tightly.

He returned the hug, frowning at her tears and those of his fiancée. "Uh, how have you been, Mrs. Weasley."

"Fine, fine." She smiled at him. "So you're going to be marrying Ginny?"

Harry blinked and stepped back, stumbling over the right words to say to the woman of questionable sanity, sometimes asking that he call her "Mum," while at others, forgetting that he and Ginny were even engaged. He caught a meaningful look from his fiancée. "Yeah, it's brilliant. I can't wait to be a Dad, er, Mum."

She beamed at him and pinched his cheek, much to his annoyance. "Who are you planning to have stand with you again?"

"Ron and George," Harry said quickly, before he noticed Arthur shaking his head.

"Not Fred?"

"Um..." A pained look crossed Harry's face and his eyes darkened.

Ginny stepped between him and her mother and said gently, "Mum, Fred died almost four years ago in the Battle of Hogwarts."

Arthur sighed as he watched the life drain from his wife's face.

"My little boy is... dead?" she asked, settling awkwardly into a chair.

Arthur placed his hands on her shoulders. "He died a hero, Molly."

Molly covered her face with her hands and her shoulders shook as she wept. After several minutes, she looked up and gasped, "I remember."

* * *

"Subject is highly resistant to four of the five third-rank revealing charms, including variants C and D, which specifically target compositional and thaumaturgic components, however E did reveal something : the handle and shaft are of elder wood; the grain is straight and exceptionally uniform. On opposite sides of the shaft are ligatures of cypher runes set about a staff bindrune. The placement of maòr and lögr within the cypher as well as the Elder Futhark character set date its creation to no later than 800 CE, predating the earliest known stories of the Peverell brothers and matching the inscriptions upon the runic arch currently residing in the Department of Mysteries. A likely explanation is that the Elder Wand was indeed found and not created by Antioch or any of the other brothers, a hypothesis supported by earlier analysis of the Cloak of Ignotus."

A Dict-a-Quill hurriedly scratched the witch's words into a notebook. As each word was written, a second notebook, open on the desk before Hermione, showed a copy of the word. Hermione waited impatiently for the words to finish transcription—she was eager to continue, having finally gotten access to the Headmaster's wand.

The quill stilled. "Page turn." A page in each book turned and she began again. "Magical resonance imaging will be employed to determine the nature of the core."

She placed a ceramic dish of quicksilver before her on the desk and tapped its rim with her wand. A hazy image appeared in its surface, one which sharpened with a second tap to reveal an impression of the wand. She gave her own wand a subtle twist and the image zoomed closer. Canting her wand downward made the image darken into a reverse image resembling a medical x-ray. The edges of the wand showed up as faint lines. Inside was an image of the core, a brilliant shaft of white which over-exposed the image.

She twisted her wand to apply a filter. Even at higher settings, the resonance generated by the powerful core overwhelmed the system and she found her wrist unable to twist beyond a certain point owing to the feedback received from the device.

"Damn," she said, biting her lower lip.

The wand started to hum and tiny ripples formed on the scrying surface. Hermione brought her left hand to the shaft of her wand and wrenched it hard clockwise with both hands, forcing the magical filter to its maximum setting. She caught a glimpse of an image inside the bowl before it exploded in a spray of mercury and shards of ceramic. The force of the small explosion knocked Hermione onto her back and tipped over a shelf and a nearby table.

"Mistress?" A female House Elf popped in.

Hermione sat up and dusted off her robes. "Dipsy, what did I say? Please call me Hermione."

"Whatever you say, Mistress Hermione." She dropped her eyes and stepped back in a curtsey.

"Dipsy, could you please get me a broom so I can clean up this mess?"

"Please Mistress Hermione. Let Dipsy clean. House Elves is good at cleaning." The Elf snapped her fingers and a broom and dustbin appeared. Hermione paced, her mind on what she had seen just before the explosion, her conscience bothered slightly by allowing the Elf to clean for her.

"Aha!" she said, rushing to the wall and pressing a panel that opened to a Pensieve. She wrenched the memory from her mind and slapped it into the basin, then dove in. After four times replays, she spotted it.

A feather--the core was a feather of some kind she didn't recognize.

Leaving the Pensieve, she rushed to her desk and dictated her finding. A minute later, the rush of her discovery waning, she sighed and drummed her fingers on her desk, staring at her foil, the white wand sitting placidly upon a pillow nearby.

"All done, Mistress Hermione. And it's six o'clock. Mistress Hermione asked Dipsy to remind her that she needs to be going." The elf was carrying a piece of shimmering fabric toward the wand.

"Thank you, Dipsy," she said, glancing at her watch. She'd promised Ginny... but she was so close! She noticed what the elf was carrying. "Dipsy, wait!"

"Mistress?" the elf asked, turning and dragging the edge of the robe over the surface of the wand.

Hermione could feel a subtle change, as the air took on a heaviness and coldness that wasn't there before. She whispered a spiritual scrying spell and touched her wand to her left eyelid, covering her right eye. In her enchanted eye, all she saw was dark, save for the timid glow of the Elf and livid red blotches about the Wand and Cloak.

The door to her workshop banged open and a gust started to blow throughout the wide, circular room.

"Mistress?" Dipsy said, shivering, as she dropped the cloak into the wand.

Fascinated, Hermoine twisted her wand, increasing the acuity of the spell, and she saw that surrounding the two Hallows were writhing tendrils of yellow-white, which also forked downward and at a diagonal from the two Hallows. The wind started to pick up and moan softly as it blew across the desks and tables. A couple of smaller parchments were caught up in the breeze and fluttered about the room. Despite the growing chaos, she couldn't help but smirk, knowing well what lay in the direction illuminated: Gringotts.

"Nice try, Harry. No wonder I couldn't locate it around Hogwarts--you had it in your vault."

In her scrying spell, she noticed blackness growing about the Hallows that displaced the gold from before. "Dipsy, move away!"

The Elf took a step, but was stopped as a large, black being with bird-like wings and eyes of solid gold rose before it. It knelt before the Elf and touched a finger to the her forehead; Hermione heard Dipsy's body fall, yet to her left eye, she stayed standing. She uncovered her right eye and saw two images of the Elf—a lifeless body upon the floor and an image of her soul, standing and facing the being before her. The winged creature, invisible in her right eye, stood suddenly and disappeared in a flicker of black flame.

"Azrael," she whispered, then remembered her fallen servant. She rushed to the tiny, glassy-eyed corpse, her eyes rimming with tears, and cradled the body. Her left eye saw Dipsy's soul look at her with sadness, then curtsey and fade from view. She wept, both for the loss of life and the realization that despite the pain, she'd be reviewing this memory in her Pensieve within the hour. This tragedy had given her insight into the nature of the Hallows and a new direction for her research.

A black feather, invisible to her unspelled eye, lay at her feet.

* * *

"It's not your fault, Harry," Ginny whispered, giving his hand a squeeze. Molly had shaken off Arthur's comfort and was now preparing their meal with a vacant, haunted expression. The only sounds in the kitchen were the "tick-tick" of the family clock and an occasional clatter of pans.

Harry nodded stoically, then kissed his fiancée on the forehead and left the kitchen to be alone. Hanging haphazardly on the walls of the hallway were several black and white Wizarding photographs showing Weasleys at different stages in their lives—Bill's departure for Hogwarts, an exhausted Molly holding twin baby boys, Ginny as a toddler on a training broom being guided by her father. Molly homeschooling a toddler Fred...

Fred. Another for whom he felt guilty. His thoughts darkened as he cursed again his decision not to seize the Deathstick when he could have. It may cost him his soul, but he would have faced Voldemort holding all the Hallows. Had it come down to the Master of Death versus the Flight of Death, the former would have prevailed, horcruxes or no.

For some reason, the photograph of Ron's and Hermione's wedding drew his eyes, though it didn't warm his heart. He saw himself there as Best Man, scowling and distracted, much like today. Ron and Hermione were beaming, obviously smitten with one another. In the image, Ginny wrapped an arm about him with a mischievous look and he smiled back—or tried to, anyway.

Ginny's Great Aunt Muriel stormed into the photograph and started berating the image of Harry, as she had that day, and cursed him. He could almost hear her words, acerbic and cruel, that he had slain Fabian—meaning Fred—and that he would never truly be a part of their family. How she knew his thoughts was a mystery, but her words echoed the blackness in his heart.

His breath caught as he noticed a vague ticking noise rose in the back of his mind.

No, not now—not here! He shook his head, hoping to dispel the growing dread. Death had claimed Fred. His partner, Danner. Remus. Tonks. Colin. Justin. Mandy. Terrance. Lucinda...

An indefinite period of time passed and Harry opened his eyes again to the image of Aunt Muriel, who was clutching desperately at her throat. Black, tarry froth billowed from the image's mouth, covering shoulders, chest, and arms. The inky substance dripped downward, peeling away flesh and sinew, leaving only bleached bones behind. The supercentenarian's body dropped motionless at the feet of the wedding party, the lower half of her face and torso dissolved. She stared at him blankly, her face a grim, skeletal leer.

Glass shattered as the photograph crashed onto the stained pine floor. Harry's legs buckled and he slid down the wall to its baseboard. Half-crouching, half-sitting, he blanked out for a time.

"Harry!" Ginny exclaimed from the kitchen and she rushed to help him, but he shrugged her off and stood, holding the photograph, now free from its frame, and bleeding from a few shallow cuts on his hands. His world was spinning and darkness swirled in the air about him.

In the kitchen, Arthur's low tones were muffled as he answered the Floo. A moment later, he ended the call and approached the two.

"Aunt Muriel is dead. It was very sudden—they don't know how."

The photograph crumpled in Harry's hands. Before Ginny could stop him, he had Apparated away.

* * *

Harry growled the incantation for Fiendfyre and a brilliant cone of white sprayed from his holly and phoenix feather wand. The ray condensed into wriggling, winged sprites of flame that flapped toward his target, an oval-shaped stone before him on the ground. They swirled and danced in a torrent of blistering heat that melted the rocky Scotland shore into green glass and charred the small boulders of basalt. Moments later, the heat lapsed as Harry dropped his spell. The sound of blood pounding in his ears abated, leaving only the murmur of distant waves and the faint sea breeze.

Harry's scream shattered the silence. The thinning smoke revealed that nothing, not even the Killing Curse or Fiendfyre, had worked. The most potent of the Hallows remained intact.

Some time later, he replaced Cadmus's stone in its gold container and closed it with a blood seal, one which only he or one of his bloodline would be able to open.

He was about to Apparate to Gringotts when he spotted a familiar white owl with golden eyes gliding toward him on the salt wind. He blinked, not trusting his heart or sanity at the sight of his familiar alive again. He wondered whether it was a side effect of his proximity to the Resurrection Stone.

"Hedwig," he whispered as she settled on his shoulder. With a shaking hand, he reached for the message fastened about her leg. Magic flared about him in a diffuse haze of blue-grey. The Glamour charm about Hedwig's plumage dulled and she turned into a common brown owl of the nondescript type favored by the Ministry.

"Dammit!" Since Hermione's law had passed, he had avoided contact with any owls, lest he be formally served a summons to produce the third Hallow. As much as he loved his best friend, he knew he couldn't trust her. Not with this.

A disembodied voice intoned, "Harry James Potter, you have been officially served notice to surrender an item of unique historical and/or magical value to the Ancient Magic Retrieval Office of the Ministry of Magic. This request is authorized under the Ancient Artifacts Preservation and Recovery Act, Section seven, paragraph B; said artifact shall be held by the Ministry for study over a period not exceeding one hundred eighty days. Until you have complied with this legal request, any work you may do, salaried or contractual, for the Ministry of Magic shall be suspended. Nor shall you receive services or moneys from same, nor withdraw contents from your Gringotts vault or any other storage facility registered with the Ministry. Should this request go unheeded for a period in excess of ninety days, you shall be placed on fugitive status and your properties subject to confiscation."

A second scream broke the April gloaming.

Harry kicked the ground hard, sending up a spray of sand, his curses as nasty as they were impassioned. "She knows how much Hedwig meant to me!" Harry ground his teeth and stared at the impostor, his eyes darkening to a near-black. He heard a loud ticking sound in the back of his mind, and he turned violently, snatching the gold box from the ground and Apparating away in a loud crack.

Behind him, the owl fell over and dissolved in a small pool of black liquid.

* * *

"...Even from those humble beginnings, it was clear that she was destined for great things. It was a privilege to be her Professor, but an even greater one to be named among her friends. Her citation reads, 'For profound contributions to the science of Soul and Spiritual Magic and for the discovery of a new, unified theory of Nigromancy.' Please join me in acknowledging the newest and youngest ever Fellow of the Royal Academy of Magic, Spellmistress Hermione Granger. Spellmistress?"

Polite applause and camera flashes followed the witch to the narrow podium, where she accepted a plaque and a hug from an uncharacteristically emotional Professor McGonagall.

She turned to the audience and applied a silent Sonorous charm to her throat. "Thank you, Professor and Spellmistress McGonagall. Before I begin, I wish to acknowledge my late colleague and dear friend, Spellmaster Davos Brocklebury, who passed away tragically this summer. The work I will present has been a collaborative effort and I would not be speaking with you today I have had it not been for his mentorship. Moreover, the Ancient Artifacts Preservation and Recovery Act, which has been invaluable to my study by ensuring timely access to magical artifacts, was his brainchild.

"At the risk of sounding provincial, let me begin by saying that Soul Magic is among the most beautiful and complex disciplines of magical theory, with surprisingly deep ties to both arithmancy and the muggle mathematical subdiscipline, differential geometry..."

She continued with the speech she had memorized and rehearsed several times over, her eyes drifting to her husband, his pride apparent from his wide grin. The years since Hogwarts had been kind to him, as he'd matured, learning to acknowledge and accept her ability without jealousy. She'd regretted neglecting him these past months, and she vowed to change that in the time ahead.

"With respect to Professor Snape's memory, while Soul Magic cannot brew glory or stopper fame, one can divine and even repair the existential connections among all ensouled beings, magical and mundane..."

Beside, her sister-in-law sat, wearing maternity robes and looking much bigger than the last time Hermione had seen her. Harry's seat beside her was empty. Hermione sighed on the inside--Harry had avoided her since the episode three months before. He was a fugitive now, unable to attend her Fellowship ceremony, lest he risk arrest. Despite their differences, she missed her friend and had hoped he would be there.

"This is its promise. Fractured souls can find solidity; the troubled can find peace. In these times of rebuilding and rebirth, such a discovery is especially p-poignant... "

She stumbled over the word as her eyes landed on a black figure in the back of the auditorium. Taking a deep breath, she nodded to an undercover Auror in the back row, who turned toward where she had indicated, but didn't seem to see Harry, staring over his head instead.

Her eyes met Harry's. Set in dark sockets, green, almost black eyes pierced her and she shivered at the feeling that her secrets, including the very big one she carried, were being laid bare. She paused to sip some water and reinforce her Occlumency. She couldn't detect him reading her thoughts, yet somehow she knew that he knew them.

She returned to the podium and continued her speech, but with a quaver in her voice. When she recovered the courage to look at him again, she caught only a glimpse of black robes disappearing in the doorway at the rear of the auditorium.

The part of her that still loved her friend was deeply touched that he had found a way to be there for her. The other part of her, the one that wanted—no, needed—the last Hallow, cursed his audacity.

* * *

Ron pushed through the swinging door into the main room of the Three Broomsticks, a pub he'd not visited since his sixth and final year at Hogwarts. His eyes scanned the tables and he saw several people he knew, but not his friend. Then again, he'd have been surprised if he had seen him.

Casting a quick charm to determine where the most north-northwesterly table was, he walked to a blank, nondescript spot in the room, ignoring Hagrid's calls to join him over a tankard of ale. After a moment, he felt confused, unable to recall why he was there. He continued to walk into oblivion, knowing that the person he sought was almost certainly not there, that he was wasting his time and he'd be much better off going somewhere else. He really should go home—there was something there that he should be doing that was terribly important. His skin started to crawl at a growing feeling of anticipation and dread. Being there was wrong, terribly wrong and he feared for his life—for his very soul. He was risking his immortal soul by just being there...

Then, a table appeared before him and the feelings quelled, except for a faint echo of the last. Harry was seated and nursing a butterbeer, his fingers tented in front of him.

"Blimey, mate. That's a wicked repelling charm."

His best mate shrugged at him and Ron noticed several new creases on his face and that his temples had picked up a light dusting of grey. "Maybe you're just getting soft?" he joked. "Does Hermione like the new, pudgier you?"

Ron made a rude gesture and sat down. "Ginny's going spare, you know. You might want to stop by her flat before she pulls out her amateur Voodoo kit. Tomorrow would be good--our crew's on 'Harry Watch' all day." Both knew that he meant Aurors still loyal to Harry and who wouldn't prosecute the Ministry's demands for his arrest.

"Yeah. I'll do that." His smirk had a hint of lasciviousness, the kind which might have gotten a rise out of Ron before. Now, all it earned was a raised eyebrow.

"You'd better. Pregnancy's hard enough, mate, but remember, she's a Weasley too, so she's got a temper on top of the wicked hormones. She'll likely hex your bits off, then jump them. Or maybe the other way around..." He was gratified to see his best mate blush.

There was a quiet pause as the conversation had turned awkward. Ron broke it. "Anyway, I've got it."

Harry's eyebrows shot up. "How?"

Ron tossed a bone-white wand onto the table before Harry, where it clattered, then rolled onto his lap. "Staged a break-in into the flat. Hermione had it on her, so I just stunned her from behind and took it off her."

Harry nodded, then closed his eyes, holding the wand to his chest. Before Ron's eyes, it seemed his friend grew both more content and more deadly than before.

After a long time, he spoke. "You know, she'll kill you if she ever finds out."

Ron shrugged. "Then she'd have to actually spend time with me. Anyway, it was dark and she didn't see her 'attacker.'" He had a playful grin. "Hey, does that make me its master now? 'Ron Weasley, Master of the Elder Wand.' I like the sound of that..."

"Be careful what you wish for, mate. No, I'm still it—I can feel it. She never actually won it off me, just nicked it from Dumbledore's grave."

"Grindelwald stole it too, though, didn't he?"

Harry shrugged, tucking the wand into the pocket of his robes and sipped his Butterbeer. "Who knows how these things work. Anyway, I'm still its master. She still obsessed as ever?"

"Worse, especially after being named to the Mucky-Muck Society of Magical Somesuch. It's like she's got this burning need to solve problems that don't need fixing."

Harry nodded grimly, not meeting his eyes. Again, Ron felt as if his best mate were keeping something from him.

Ron spoke, studying the reaction shown by his brother-in-law-to-be. "She thinks the horcruxes did something to us out there. I mean, I'll be the first to admit that wearing the locket wasn't a holiday, and yeah, I did step out for a bit, but it didn't affect us that bad, did it?" He saw Harry flinch slightly.

Harry paused, choosing his words. "No. I doubt Tom's soul is the problem. It was dark magic, but no worse than half of what we found when your Mum had us clean out Number Twelve."

Something clicked in Ron's head. "The bloody Hallows. That's what this is about. That's why you wanted the Wand and Cloak back so badly."

Harry nodded. "They're more than they seem. Far more..."

"Have you tried destroying them?"

"Won't work. Confundus, Reducto, Confringo, Fiendfyre, Killing Curse... Hell, I even tried the Imperius on the Stone, hoping I could gain control over it. Nothing."

"Figures. You know, the friend in me wishes you'd keep 'em as far away from her as you can, but the husband in me wants you to give her the bloody thing and be done with it. I want my wife back, not this... whatever she is now."

"I can't," Harry sighed. His eyes darkened and when he looked up, his stare sent a chill into the Auror. A moment later, Harry closed his eyes tightly and shook his head. "Bloody things. I'll do whatever I have to to keep them out of her hands. She still thinks that she can do some great good with them, but it's not in their nature."

"You don't need to convince me. Bloody annoying things, they are."

"They're worse than that. The role of the Master of Death is to create death, something I've had enough of."

Ron nodded, not quite understanding the point his friend was making. "We all have, mate, and thanks--if getting ahold of two Hallows could do this to her, three would drive her spare."

"They'd drive anyone spare. Though I was their master, I only ever had two Hallows together at once. I threw away the Stone before I got the Wand. All three together..." He shivered. "I don't think I could avoid becoming what they want me to become."

"Keep the wand on you, mate. There's no telling when she'll figure out what happened and come after it."

"I will. And thanks," Harry said.

"Any time. Let's get this behind us and move on with our lives. You've got my little sister to spoil." Ron soft-punched his friend's shoulder as he stood up.

"Yeah." Harry affected a thin smile. Ron couldn't help but notice that it didn't quite meet his eyes.

* * *

Two figures in black hooded robes stepped off the main thoroughfare in Diagon Alley into a side alley, seeking a nondescript way to get to Gringotts. The taller of the two held the arm of the shorter and they moved slower than they would have liked, the shorter having a very severe bulge about her middle that marked a third trimester of pregnancy.

Ahead, three men stepped from the shadows into the alley, blocking their path. Another two entered the alley from behind, blocking any escape. Each had a wand out.

"Potter," one of the three said, stepping forward. He was a man in his mid-thirties, with brown hair and a dark complexion. Harry vaguely recognized him from his days in the Ministry as an operative for the Unspeakables.

"So sorry, I don't remember your name." He said through clenched teeth, backing slowly to the side of the alley, where he pulled Ginny between him and the wall to protect her. A faint aura of black, almost imperceptible in the dim light, started to swirl around Harry.

"My name isn't important," the man said, settling into a dueling stance.

"Harry!" Ginny whispered loudly. "Let's get out of here."

Harry grasped her hand and reached into the pocket of his robes with the other hand, finding the brass owl figurine. "Woolen stockings," he said, whispering the pass phrase for the portkey. Nothing happened, aside from a brief flash of blue above—an anti-Portkey ward—and amusement among their assailants. Ginny cursed under her breath, then stopped as she saw a faint pair of black wings rise from her fiancé's back.

"What do you want?" Harry asked the man, who was now only a dozen paces away. He heard a faint ticking noise in the back of his head.

"A duel. And, when we defeat you, the Elder Wand."

"I don't have it," Harry said quickly.

The man smirked at him. "Do you take me for a fool?"

"Fine. You can have your duel, just let her go first."

"I am not leaving, Harry!" Ginny said.

"Sorry, love, but you're in no condition to fight and I don't want our daughter hurt." He glared at the men and the ticking sound in his mind became louder, almost to the point of distraction. The air in the alleyway chilled and darkened and took on a palpable feeling of menace.

"I don't think so," the man said. "Draw your wand and let's settle this."

Harry's eyes narrowed as he reached into his robes for his wand.

The black aura about Harry increased in intensity. Time seemed to slow as the first curses flew from from the wands of his attackers. In response, his own wand flashed a trio of bright green bludgeoners in rapid succession. Then time stopped and something shattered in his mind.

Five thick fibrils of black snaked from Harry's wand, absorbing the stationary curses of his enemies and whipping about each of his attackers' torsos. A sixth arced forward, then bent back toward his fiancée. Wide-eyed, Harry threw all of his force of will into deflecting its course. It obeyed in the last moment, scoring the wall inches from her head instead.

Time sped up again. The five fell to their knees and pawed at their throats as they spat black froth from their mouths. Bludgeoner spells connected with three of the bodies, shattering them into a spray of bone fragments and blood. The other two fell to the ground, devoid of life.

Harry shouted at his fiancée, dragging her past the dying men as fast as he dared.

"Merlin," she gasped as the carnage registered.

As they neared the end of the alley, she stopped and bent over, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the ground. A moment later, she looked up and Harry felt a lump in his throat at what he saw in her eyes.

Ginny, his beloved, was terrified of him.


	2. Chapter 2

Hermione paced vigorously in her workshop in the Department of Mysteries. Her wand was out and it was trailing red and black sparks behind her.

"It should be feasible to maximally extend the soul manifold, if not the fibre bundles connected to each soul--I refuse to accept that the singularities aren't at least weakly integrable," she mumbled.

She stopped suddenly and ran her other hand through untamed hair.

"Mathemagica, Project." A ghostly membrane appeared in front of her, which she caused to rotate with a gesture from her wand. "Morph, transformation gamma two, along the locus of life lines. Paint surface with integral curves of tangent manifold." The membrane became covered in a star-shaped pattern of white lines. It started to distort, turning in on itself, leaving the surface smooth everywhere except for one patch, where she saw the surface twist and writhe as invisible fingers pinched it and pulled it into a cone of lines spiraling off into oblivion, a graphical representation of the termination of life itself. Every line, no matter where its initial origin, tracked with the errant section of solution space and became lost in the singularity. Every curve, every life, had jagged and bumpy bits, the ghost of a fundamental flaw in the manifold itself. Hermione noted dryly that some Muggle religions referred to this as original sin. "Stop," she said, before the solution became so distorted as to defy projection.

She walked up to the membrane, suspended motionless in the air before her, and stared at it, her fury building. "Argh!" She drove her fist through the image. It wavered for a moment, then solidified again, mocking her with its twisted perversion. "I'm so bloody close... this singularity is the last. I can remove all the rest, but I can't find a way to disentangle it, not with the finality of death staring in my face."

She paced again, snatching a bottle of water from the desk, and took a long swig from it.

"The Eden solution, my whole reason for being, can't be realized until I solve this. World peace, an end to human suffering... I could do it--I'd be hailed as the greatest wizard since Merlin—if it weren't for ruddy death." She set the bottle on the edge of the table. It fell sideways and spilled its contents onto the floor.

Laughter, cynical, came from her, then turned into sobs. She dropped into a hard-back chair, the high type favored by rune specialists, and placed her forehead on her forearms, her shoulders shaking.

"Bloody Death," she wailed. "I'm so damned close. Four years of my life devoted to this, and it's all dross. Four years, locking myself in here, and it's right there—right there! If only Death could be thwarted in more than the most superficial way..." Again, her thoughts turned to the third Hallow, the one Harry refused to share with her. She knew the answer lay with it somehow, but not in any obvious way.

Unless...

The witch bolted up in a frenzy. "Imagine a subdomain containing just the Hallow," she said to herself, grabbing a fresh piece of parchment and starting to scribble. "And suppose that life lines attached here with a smooth mapping..." Writing frenetically, she snapped the tip of her quill, spattering ink onto her hands and face. Without thinking, she tossed it aside and grabbed another and continued scribbling and muttering to herself.

Two hours later, she sat back, a wide smile on her face. With a quick motion of her hand, she duplicated her notes and the copy floated onto her filing shelves. She knew that she probably should go over them one time before she left—she'd been burned many times by the glee of feeling she'd solved a problem, only to find in the morning that she had made a fundamental error, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. Not tonight—tonight, she would savor her victory. She just knew that this time she'd worked it out. It felt too right to be wrong.

"Harry," she drawled, "You're giving me that Hallow. This is far too big for you to sit on." With that, she noticed a cream coloured envelope sitting atop her copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. She placed the book on her lap and opened the letter. "You are cordially invited..."

Harry's and Ginny's wedding was that day. Harry would be there.

Pausing to retrieve her cloak, she touched her wand to a glyph on the invitation and activated the Portkey. A moment later, she felt a sharp tug about her navel.

* * *

"Pace yourself there, mate." Ginny's new husband went to her brother's side to steady him as he tipped another shot of Firewhiskey into his throat. At this late hour, only a few people remained of the wedding party—Harry, Ginny, Ron, Ginny's parents, and George, who was dozing on a chair in front of the fire. Winky and Molly were fighting with each other over whose privilege it was to clean up and Arthur was with them in the dining room, trying to keep the peace.

Husband! She still couldn't believe it. Savoring the moment, she closed her eyes and put her hand on her abdomen. Lily shifted inside her.

"Everything okay?" Harry asked, rejoining her and placing his hand over hers. He too felt the movement beneath her skin.

"Yeah," she said, blotting her eyes. "I'm just so happy. So is Lily, I can tell. As active as she is, I think she's going to be a Beater in a few years."

"You look brilliant today, Gin. I'm the happiest man in the world." Harry, who though distracted, had a smile that hadn't left his face all night. He moved to kiss her.

They were interrupted by her brother's ramblings. "Bloody doesn't matter to her at all! You'd think if anything, she'd want to see her mates get hitched. I mean, yeah, you've got the bun in the oven and all so it's no secret that you two are..."

"Ron!" Ginny glared at her brother, but he was too far potted to notice her anger.

"I envy you, Harry," he said, getting up and stumbling onto the sofa next to Harry, hanging on his shoulder. "You've got a wife who adores you... even if she does leave her feminine things on top of the waste bin. Watch out for that, mate."

"Ron, you'll shut your mouth right now!" Ginny's wand flashed into her hand. Harry fought back a chuckle at her pout.

"Watch it mister, I know where you live," she said to her husband in mock anger, turning the wand onto him.

Harry planted a kiss on her lips to diffuse the situation, one that deepened until Ron started to cough conspicuously.

"I'm sure something came up," Harry said. "Hermione would have made it if she could." He and Ginny shared a glance—it was clear that neither believed it.

"She works alone! How could something just bloody 'come up'? Face it, she loves her work more than she does you guys. Or me... Especially me." Ron started to cry into Harry's shoulder, then blearily reached for his glass.

"I'm sure that's not true," Ginny said, levitating glass and bottle away from his grasp.

Ron fell forward onto the floor, bumping into the short table where the Weasley family clock, with its two new hands, Harry's and Lily's, displayed prominently. The clock teetered before settling upright. A little too late, Ron reached to steady it, knocking it backward onto the table with a loud clatter.

"Even when she does come home, it's not like she's there. Spends her time mumbling about some 'Eden solution' rot." Kneeling, he turned to Harry and put his hand on his best mate's knee. "Am I ugly, mate? It's okay. You can tell me."

"I don't swing that way, Ron."

"You're not ugly." Ginny said, rolling her eyes and righting the clock with her wand. "She's just missing out."

"_She's_ missing out? What about me? It's been months since we last..."

"Ron, I _really_ don't want to know..."

Ginny heard a whistle of wind behind her and she turned to see, much to her surprise, that Hermione had indeed arrived, albeit nine hours late and looking somewhat worse for wear. Her hair was matted on the left side and on the right, it stuck out in a bushy mass. Her skin was pallid and oily and smeared with ink. Her robes were wrinkled and badly in need of a wash. Most disturbing was the manic gleam in her eyes—eyes that Ginny noticed were darker than their normal honey brown. For some reason, they reminded her of Harry's.

"I've done it," she said triumphantly.

Ginny caught the stormy look on her husband's face and reached for his hand.

"Congratulations," Harry said icily. "Won't you come and join us? We were just having a spot of cake."

Hermione blinked, then said, "I need the other Hallow, Harry. Now."

"No."

Molly bustled in, ignoring the tension. "Hermione, you poor dear. They're still working you too hard. Arthur, I thought you were going to have to have a talk with someone at the Ministry--it isn't right, making the poor girl work so hard, and on a weekend too!" She took Hermione's arm. "Do come in. Have you eaten? We have leftovers and plenty of cake in the ice box. Would you like to view the ceremony in a pensieve? It was such a lovely..."

"No thanks, Molly," she said, interrupting the matron and pulling out of her grasp. She put her hands on her hips and glared at Harry. "It's my right to study it. I _need_ to. This is for all of humanity—you can't be so selfish as to just hold onto it. And you've received an official summons. You have no right to tell me no."

"The hell I can't. 'N'. 'O'. No. Don't ask again." He winced as if listening to something in the back of his mind. Ginny felt a heaviness in her throat and Lily started to kick frantically inside her.

"What the hell is your problem, woman?" Ron thundered, waking George up from his alcohol-induced slumber. "You have some nerve, ignoring us all for months, then you come here, the day of their _wedding_ of all days, and all you can talk about is your ruddy work."

"Ron, this doesn't concern you."

"The hell it doesn't. I'll stun you again if I have to to keep your hands off the bloody Hallows."

"That was you! Do you have any idea how much that set my work back!" Ginny saw Harry slip away toward a side room.

"It was for your own good, dear," Ron said smugly.

"I hate you," she hissed, slapping him hard across the face.

"Now let's all try and settle down," Arthur said loudly, stepping between the fighting couple.

"You're an imbecile, Ron. My work needs information only the Deathly Hallows can provide. Something that could help all of us." Hermione blinked tears from her eyes and down her cheeks. "And you stole it from me like a common thief. Here I thought you supported me--I thought you loved me..."

"I do, which is why I had to take the bloody thing away. They can't be used the way you want to."

"I suppose you're an expert on the Hallows now," she said sarcastically.

"I know what I see, Hermione, and what I see isn't you. It's the Hallows, the only thing you care about anymore."

"That's not true," she said, turning away.

"It is and you know it."

"The Deathly Hallows?" Molly asked, confused. "Aren't they a children's story?"

"They're real, Mum." Ginny said in the middle of standing clumsily to follow her husband. The final month of pregnancy was by far the hardest, something she was acutely aware of every time she tried to get up.

"Harry used the Hallows to defeat You-Know-Who," Ron said. "He's the Master of Death."

"But if the Hallows are real, that means... that Harry could bring back my Fred," Molly said, her voice barely more than a whisper. Ginny's heart ached--her mother had only recently accepted that her son was indeed gone. This false hope could destroy her.

"He can't," Ron said. "They're way too dangerous for Harry or anyone to use. Look what they did to Hermione. Hell, look at Harry--bloke acts like he's a bloody Inferius half the time."

"That's because he's not using them right." Hermione groused. "And they can be used for something far more important than just resurrecting a loved one." She paused dramatically. "I'm talking about world peace."

"But he can try, can't he?" Molly asked, her voice meek, like that of a child.

"Yeah, wouldn't hurt to try, eh?" George added. "I mean, the bloke's already dead—Fred that is. Harry, he's not quite dead, though his conversation skills might suggest otherwise. Anyway, what's he got to lose?"

"Evil as they are, I don't think anything good can come of using them," Ron said.

George said, "Well, he did knock off You-Know-Who with 'em. That counts as something good in my book."

"Yeah, but at what cost, George?"

"What do you mean?" George asked.

"Didn't you hear me?" Hermione shouted, her face red. "I said they can be used to bring about world peace! World Bloody Peace!"

"That's nice dear," Molly said, patting her on the arm. "But we were talking about my Fred."

"If Harry had it in his power to bring Fred back, I'm sure he would have," Arthur said. "I think we should trust his judgment on this..."

* * *

Ignoring the argument in the background, Ginny knocked on the door. She didn't hear an answer, so she turned the handle and pushed it open to find a darkened room and her husband standing at the other side, facing away from her. He was shivering and his hands were clenched into fists.

"Harry?" she said, reaching to turn on the gas lamps and seeing to her surprise that they were already turned on.

A thick, black cloud swirled about him. He turned toward her and she could see his eyes were pinpoints of black. "Stay away from me!" His voice had an inhuman timbre.

She blinked, then frowned and took a step forward. "No."

"Please, I don't know if I can control it!"

"I know you can, Harry. I'm not leaving you."

Harry screamed as he fell to the floor. The darkness swirled ferociously and there was a low roar from all directions as the sense of dread increased tenfold. Then if faded, as the black drew inside him slowly. After a moment, he was on hands and knees, perspiring and panting heavily.

"Sorry," he gasped between pants.

"No problem, love," she said, biting her lip. "All married couples have their rough patches once in awhile."

He smiled faintly. "Not this rough." He looked over her shoulder to the doorway, where her family had started to gather, drawn by the ruckus. "We're okay here. Just a brief spell is all."

"Are you sure? Maybe I should call a Healer."

"I'm fine, Molly."

"Didn't I ask you to call me Mum? Anyway, you didn't sound so fine a moment ago. What were you shouting?"

"Mu-um." Ginny said.

"Fine, fine, I know when I'm not wanted. I'll just go back to the kitchen and clean up. Hermione, dear, come and help, please."

Ginny rolled her eyes, then turned to the others. "Um, can Harry and I have a moment?"

"No problem, Gin," George said, then stepped forward and lowered his voice, "Ask him if he can use his Hallow thingee on Fred."

Ginny sighed and shooed him from the room. She closed the door behind him and Harry cast a Muffliato charm about the room.

"Gin, I need your help."

"Anything, love, but first, I think it's time you explained to me what's going on."

Harry sighed and nodded. "It's been getting a lot worse lately."

She gave him a hug, made a bit more difficult by her large belly. "So that time we were attacked in the alley?"

"Yeah. Normally, I just black out, but that time I was aware as... it happened again. I almost lost control and hurt you—I still can't forgive myself for that. I'm terrified, Gin, of what I could become. I honestly don't know how much longer I can hold out against it. It's starting to affect Hermione too, I can tell."

She hugged him tighter and he stroked her hair. "You're strong, Harry, the strongest man I know. We'll find a way to beat this."

"I honestly hoped when I gave Hermione the other Hallows that she'd solve the problem, like she always did. Instead, she just dug in deeper, obsessed for a reason I don't understand. I can't let her get ahold of the Stone—it's too dangerous. And I can't trust myself not to go and seize it, Ministry decrees be damned, and lose myself to it."

"What can I do?" she asked, resolute.

"I hate to ask this of you tonight of all nights, but could you go to our vault and in the third chamber on the right is a small golden box with a blood seal that you won't be able to open. I've arranged with Ragnok for a new, secret vault to be made which you alone have access to and it's ready. The vault is gold-lined and has every magical dampening charm known to Wizards or Goblins. You need to seal the box inside. It's the only thing I can think of--the only way to buy us some time."

"I'll do it." She kissed her husband.

"I had planned on moving it tomorrow, but I wouldn't put it past Hermione and the Ministry to raid our vault by morning."

"Is this fireplace connected?" She gestured to the one in the room.

"Yeah. You need someone to go with you, though. It's not safe alone. I can't—after what just happened, I can tell that the pull is almost irresistible, even this far away. Should I get Ron?"

She shook her head. "Too much to drink. Same with George. Besides, he wants you to use the Stone to bring Fred back, so I wouldn't put it past him to tell Hermione."

"I could call one of our crew, but I don't want to put anyone in a position where he has to choose between loyalty to me and being an Auror. How about your father?"

She nodded.

Harry went to the door and called Arthur over. An Incendio lit the fireplace and as she stepped toward the green flames, Ginny thought she heard a whisper of fabric from somewhere in the room.

* * *

Ginny hiked the hem of her wedding robes up and jogged out of the fireplace ahead of her father through the dark, empty pub. Chairs were overturned atop the tables clearing a path to the rear of the room, where the small courtyard and entrance of Diagon Alley lay.

"Dad, hurry," she called over her shoulder, feeling a strange need to hurry.

"Coming, Snapdragon," he said, jogging beside her as they reached the rear door. He insisted on holding it open for her, much to her dismay. "Should you be running like that in your condition?"

"Probably not." She ambled toward the wall and took out her wand, poking at the bricks. She missed the sequence the first time and had to start over.

"Easy there. Slow and steady wins the race," her father said, causing her to mess up the sequence again.

With a grumble, she started tapping the bricks a third time, as the feeling of dread inside her grew. Tap. Tap. Tap...

She heard a crumple and a loud crack, as something struck the cobblestone at her feet. She turned and looked down. Her father was on the ground unconscious, bleeding from a head wound.

"Dad?" She dropped into a defensive stance and scanned the dark.

Nobody was there.

She heard a rustle of wings and a faint squeal. She spun toward the noise; it was just an owl, landing upon the wall with a mouse, the evening's dinner.

Hear heart raced as her eyes darted left, right, then left again. Nobody, still. Then a faint ribbon of pink light struck her and she felt... wonderful. A woman's voice inside her head told her that everything was fine and she just knew that it was. The voice said that she that all she had to do was get the stone from her vault, as Harry had asked her, and bring it to the Ministry, that it would be safer there than Gringotts. The voice told her that Harry would be happy with her decision.

She wanted the stone to be safe. She wanted Harry to be happy.

She tapped the final brick and the walls slid apart.

* * *

"Hit me with a sobriety charm, mate." Ron tossed Harry his wand.

"You sure? You'll be feeling it tomorrow."

"I don't care. Something isn't right."

"You and your instincts," Harry joked, then muttered the charm. A light blue cone shot from the end of Ron's wand and surrounded his body. Harry held the charm on him for a full seven minutes, as required for full sobriety. The charm was unpleasant because of the way it broke down the alcohol, generating a glut of lactic acid in the recipient's bloodstream.

"Ugh. Every time, it seems to get worse," Ron said, stretching his sore limbs gingerly.

"You're just drinking more."

"Well, there is that." He tossed down an elixir to blunt the pain.

"Hey Ron?"

Ron grunted in reply.

"If anything happens to me, look after Gin, okay?"

"You planning on dying or something?"

"Not exactly, but things are in motion... if we don't settle things with this last Hallow, I don't know how long..."

"Don't worry. I've got your back." Ron clasped his hand on the shoulder of his best friend.

"Gin and I are planning to name you Lily's godfather."

"I'm honored, mate. Just... well, think twice about making Hermione the godmother. Much as I love her, it seems my dear wife's finally going around the bend."

"Yeah, I'm worried about her too," Harry said.

"I'm actually more worried about what she might do to get ahold of the Stone."

"I'm taking care of it, actually. Gin and your dad went to Gringotts while your mum distracted her here."

"Uh, she never went with Mum."

A tortured scream rang out—Molly's. Harry and Ron rushed into the sitting room to see her holding the family clock, her face frozen in shock. Harry could see his hand was on "At Home"; Molly's and Ron's were "Visiting a Friend"; Hermione's was "At Work."

Arthur's showed "Mortal Peril."

Harry noticed that Molly's eyes were not on the clock. He followed her gaze and his own face became blank as he noticed two hands lying upon the table. Ginny's and a tiny sliver of steel—Lily's.

Beside them, a vase of white lilies wilted. A moment later, Harry disappeared in a crack of thunder.

* * *

Blood. So much of it--on her hands, her clothes, the floor.

She was in the amphitheater near the Veil, where she had planned to implement the Eden solution, the greatest discovery in the history of magic and a means by which to usher in an era of unending peace. Merlin had achieved but a glimpse of its potential with Avalon.

A sudden gust circled the room, causing candles to flicker and runes on the floor to glisten.

She peered at the runes, which had been scribed in fresh blood. Odd, that--ink would have done just as well. Curiously, they seemed to be in her handwriting. Why did she have no memory of it?

An ivory pedestal stood before the Veil, upon which the Resurrection Stone, the focus needed to enact the solution, would be placed to complete the ritual. Everything seemed complete, save for the Stone.

The Resurrection Stone--something clicked in the back of her mind, a memory of... Gringotts and a woman. A woman with red hair.

Ginny! It was Ginny who had gotten the Stone for her. Where was she?

Hermione stepped back and tripped, falling onto her bum. She looked at what it was she had tripped over and saw a woman's body, lying still. Her face, pale and freckled, was turned toward her with eyes that were glassy and lifeless.

Hermione gasped and backed into a tier. Ginny's abdomen had been sliced open and beside her lay the corpse of her fetus. It too had been violated.

Hermione vomited and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Had she done this? If so, why? And why had she no memory of it?

She placed her hand in the pocket of her robes and felt two items, a tiny box of some sort and a worn leather book. She grasped the book in her left hand, drawing strength from its familiarity and her grief and disgust faded somewhat. She examined the box in her right. It was fashioned out of gold.

Something ticked in the back of her mind.

She had a faint memory of a blood seal and of drawing blood from a fetus to bypass it. Her grief returned and her stomach protested against the memory, but she produced nothing but bile. Blinking back tears, she pressed the tip of her thumb to the latch and the lid sprang open. Inside was a ring--the third Hallow, Cadmus's Stone.

Her breath caught and she felt a powerful, overwhelming urge to seize it and claim it for herself, Eden be damned!

The ticking sound in her head grew loud and her heart beat rapidly.

She whispered, "Forgive me, Harry. I'll bring Ginny and your daughter back. It'll be worth it, I swear."

She reached for the ring and placed it upon her hand, relishing the fiery strength it gave her. Her reservations melted into memory as she lost herself in darkness.

–

The door to the Department of Mysteries exploded inward as a being wreathed in midnight with black, ghostly wings stepped into the amphitheater. "Hermione," it said with a cold voice that evoked the chill of a grave.

"Harry." Her own voice was equally inhuman.

He stood silent for a moment, eyes closed, as he concentrated. The blackness surrounding him abated somewhat, yet he remained haunted. In an unsteady voice, he asked, "What have you done with my wife and child?"

Hermione's eyes were chips of coal. "I've taken the Stone. You owed it to me."

Harrry spied a woman's red hair and he rushed to the floor before her. His shaking hands balled into fists as he knelt over his beloved's mangled body. "Dead..." he whispered, not believing his eyes. He threw his head back and screamed to the heavens, "No!" A minute later, hoarse, he could only repeat, "No... No," Sobbing, he closed Ginny's eyes gently and placed Lily into her lifeless arms.

After a long time, he stood and glared at his one-time friend, the darkness swirling about him once again. It had a malevolence that matched his mood. He growled, "I owed you nothing, murderer."

"Death is irrelevant for beings such as we."

"You know nothing. Death can't be undone so frivolously, not without sacrifice." His own eyes, moist from grief, became black and cold.

"I have come to know it, Harry, and it's power." She clenched her fist and it became wreathed in blue faerie flame.

"You don't understand what you're meddling with. The Hallows--you can't hope to control them. They'll consume you." The aura about him darkened to the consistency of pitch before he shook his head violently, causing it to fade.

"I know more about them than anyone, living or dead. Only I can use them to their potential. I was destined for them, not you."

"Destiny. So you believe in Divination now..." A bone-white wand appeared in his pale hand.

"In this, I do. This is my purpose."

"Eden?"

"I don't care about Eden anymore. Let humanity suffer--they've wrought their fate with their infantile wrangling over petty concerns. I have power instead, the power that was always mine to claim. The power to fashion a new way, and to force the masses to submit to it."

"Then the Hermione I knew is already gone." His wand flashed a silent curse and a jagged yellow bolt leaped at her. She raised her own wand, a slender, black rod with runes matching Harry's, and swatted his curse away idly. It crashed against one of the piers, shattering it. Her return strike, a fan of red lightning that glowed in the dark chamber, was barely stopped by his shield. Even still, a few rivulets penetrated and stabbed his left shoulder, scorching robes and skin.

"How?" he asked, knowing that she should not have been able to thwart his assault so handily.

"I've fashioned my own Hallows, Harry—my own Cloak, my own Deathstick." She held up an ebony wand and flicked it idly. A magenta bolt struck the floor before one of the piers. A cloud of pink mist appeared, then faded, leaving behind a startled Professor Dumbledore. "Surely you knew it was within my ability to do so. I am the greatest of our generation, after all..."

"I believed you could, but I never thought you would, Hermione. This is... desecration," Harry said, as his favorite professor stood up tall and stretched his limbs. A second bolt summoned an ancient bearded wizard. The man was short and stocky, wearing robes decorated in Celtic knots and ancient glyphs, and he leaned upon a gnarled staff. Harry guessed it was Merlin himself. A third conjured a dark-haired woman with navy robes and a severe face. Harry recognized her from her portraits in Hogwarts—Rowena Ravenclaw.

"All of the knowledge I could ever hope for is mine to command. I shall be the greatest, Harry." She nodded to the wizards she had summoned. "Defeat him."

"Sir?" Harry asked his mentor as he backpeddled.

"It pains me that I find myself compelled to attack you," Dumbledore said sadly. "Would that I had known this quality of the Stone, I would not have sought it so so earnestly in my youth. Please, Harry, you must command the powers of death to survive."

"No," Harry protested, readying a shield. "Ask me anything but that..."

His mentor sighed, then made a wide, looping motion with his arm, which conjured a scythe of glowing bronze that leapt from the tip of his wand and spun toward Harry. It made a massive "gong" as it slammed into Harry's shield and deflected into the wall, tearing a massive rent in the stone. At the same time, a Basilisk-sized dragon was conjured out of flame by the other bearded wizard. It leaped upon Harry, pinning him to the ground with its massive foreclaws. A tongue of white fire shot from the beast's maw, licking his face and scorching chin, hair, and skin. Harry wriggled his wand arm free and discharged an ice spear into the dragon's brainpan, dispelling it. Before he could move, an animated stone pier—Rowena's handiwork--pinched closed about his left leg, holding him fast.

Harry screamed as his bones snapped, then shattered the pier with a blasting curse. Rolling to his feet, but favoring his ruined leg, he conjured a rock wall from floor to ceiling between him and the three wizards, then used a charm to make it transparent on his side. He transfigured a second pier into a huge adder, which he Disilliusioned and silenced. In Parseltongue, he ordered the snake to stalk and attack the witch from the right flank. Just then, Merlin rose from liquid stone behind him and hurled a blue ball of lightning at Harry. The younger wizard avoided it--barely--by diving face-first onto the ground. It passed over his head, singeing his wings and shattering the wall as if it were glass.

Harry started to push himself up, but hissed as a dozen slender, marble spears protruded up from the floor, impaling his shoulders, arms, and legs and suspending him face-down and immobile, just above eye level. Dumbledore faded into view beside him with a solemn look on his face. Merlin nodded to the man and crossed his arms over his staff. Behind, Harry heard a woman's scream—his serpent had apparently struck down the Ravenclaw witch, a hollow victory.

Hermione stepped forward confidently. "Kill him," she said to her minions.

"I am truly sorry, dear boy. It saddens me that you did not fight us as an avatar. You stood no chance facing us as a wizard." Dumbledore conjured an iron spear and drove it up through the front of Harry's chest and out his back near his spine.

"Harry's scream died quickly on his lips as he expended the last air in his collapsed lungs. Wide-eyed, he watched as his blood flowed down the shaft jutting from his chest and pooled upon the runes beneath him, joining that of his wife's. They would be together in death, if not in life.

"Bugger me with a broomstick!" Ron's voice was behind. "Y-you... my sister... and Harry..." he said in shock at the grisly scene.

"Ron, sweetheart?" Hermione said sweetly amidst a tempest of swirling dark. "Can you go home and wait for me there? I'm a bit tied up at the moment..."

"The hell I will. What the devil is going on?"

"I really don't have time to explain. You wouldn't understand anyway."

"You're damned right I don't understand," he said, drawing his wand. "Like how you could go slaughtering your friends like pigs for power! That's the sort of thing a Dark Lord would do." She started to answer him, but he interrupted her. "Save it. I'm sure Voldemort and Grindelwald had good reasons for why they killed everyone too."

He fell into a dueling crouch and his words, while practiced, were devoid of life. "Put down your wand and come quietly, or I will have no choice but to use deadly force."

Hermione answered with a bone-shattering curse at neck-level. Ron's Auror training came to the fore as he defended with a silent shield spell. Unfortunately, the charm solidified an instant too late and only deflected the witch's curse somewhat, the blue-grey bolt striking his left clavicle instead, snapping it like a twig.

He grunted and sent a powerful stunner back toward his wife. She slapped his spell away easily, as if toying with him. A blasting curse followed from the second Deathstick, aimed a the floor by his feet. The yellow bolt crashed into the marble and the resulting explosion, which left a meter-wide crater, tossed the Auror up into the air and back against the wall, where his back struck at an awkward angle, making a sickening crunch.

"Avada Kedavra!" A sickly green bolt wreathed in black jetted from Hermione's ebony wand and struck her husband dead on the spot.

Harry grimaced as Ron's body slid down the wall to the floor, his wand rolling from lifeless fingers. He felt his own life ebb just then, the final drops of his blood leaving him. However, instead of the peace he had envisioned at the end of his life, he felt a massive rage well inside him. Time slowed to a stop as a solitary droplet of blood, black in the werelight, suspended an inch from the pool beneath.

He looked up and green eyes met gold. The avatar of Azrael, the Reaper of Souls and the tormenter of his dreams, knelt to meet his gaze and for once he did not turn away. The being bowed its head reverently.

"I accept this call," Harry said, in death forsaking a vow he had sworn in life.

The dark angel placed a hand upon Harry's head and he felt a moment of disorientation as stone and iron shattered and his broken body reformed, hale and pure of purpose. An eternity of wisdom flowed into his brain and he found himself clinging desperately to his meagre identity, a mote lost among the million cycles of the Mazal. Human language and thought was displaced in his mind by Kabbalistic incantations older than time itself. Darkness swirled about him and for once he reveled in it, embracing his true nature. Then he espied the sacrilege and it aroused his wroth.

"Impostor," he hissed, his mouth feeling different, as if his tongue were formed for a purpose other than human speech.

Hermione looked up. "Impossible! You were dead!"

"I _am_ Death. To kill me would be an oxymoron." He spied the Headmaster smiling at him over half-moon glasses. "Your presence here, wizard... it is a grievous affront."

"Thank you, Harry. I was most distressed as well to have had my peace interrupted." Merlin nodded at Dumbledore's words. A black bolt from the Deathstick, a purified form of the abomination that became Killing Curse, struck the Headmaster in the chest and a smile graced the old man's face as he returned to the next great adventure.

"No, you cannot!" Hermione shouted, sending a bolt of blue toward Harry, striking him on the shoulder. Flesh and sinew evaporated beneath it, then reformed just as quickly. He ignored it, instead turning toward Merlin. Harry held his right arm straight, then clenched his fingers. A cage of smoke formed around the venerable wizard. He approached the man and said to him in his ancient tongue, "What do you seek, great wizard."

"To return to death," he said in response, bowing low before Harry. Harry touched a finger to the man's forehead and he too slumped lifeless to the ground.

* * *

"Avada Kedavra!" Hermione shouted and a chattering green bolt arced toward Harry. Before it struck, he disappeared in black flames.

There was silence, deadly and foreboding.

The chamber shuddered from a sub-sonic blow, which caused large blocks of granite to fall from the ceiling. A second, deep rumble collapsed the doorway and the lights went out entirely, all except for an eerie glow from beyond the Veil. Hermione spun, sensing a presence behind her, and she muttered a spell that expelled a gleaming ribbon of silver from the end of her wand that sliced into the blackness.

It found traction in _something_ in the impenetrable darkness, as evinced by the faint grunt she heard. She hurled a fireball in its direction, but the vanishing flare showed nothing.

A backhand from nowhere spun her around and left her prone upon the cold marble floor, spitting blood. She rolled to a seated position and a bevy of bludgeoning curses flew from her wand in the direction where she thought her adversary was. Each missed and instead crashed into the walls of the amphitheater. Large sheets of stone broke from the walls and fell, filling the air with dust.

She coughed, then spun around.

A hint of movement behind her drew a cone of blue flame in that direction.

Nothing.

She waited, a curse on her lips.

Still nothing.

The silence broke with a chant in a language she didn't recognize. A half second after it started, rain fell inside the chamber and she hissed as the droplets sizzled on her skin.

"Tears of the Damned." Harry said from his perch, not ten feet before her.

She sent a Killing Curse in his direction. He answered with a black bolt and the two jets met in the middle. A dome of crystal formed about them as the spell arcs pressed against one another, each wrestling for dominance. In the background was a chorus of angelic voices.

"Priori Incantatem," Harry said.

Hermione answered through gritted teeth, "Both wands share the same core, a feather from Death itself."

With an act of will, Harry forced the bead back to Hermione's wand. It moved with agonizing slowness toward its tip. As the two merged, Ron's likeness appeared, a white, ghost-like figure between them.

"I can't believe it. You bloody killed me, Hermione," he said, then turned toward Harry with a penitent expression. "Sorry, mate. I wasn't much help there in the end."

Hermione's gaze glinted to the ghost of her husband and the tip of her wand quivered. Her face flickered from resolute to pained and back again. "No," she hissed, forcing the bead a foot back from the end of her wand.

"The Hermione I knew was loving and gentle—she cared about her friends," Harry growled, sending the bead back faster this time. A moment later, a likeness of Ginny appeared, cradling a child in her arms. "You killed us, Hermione, and for what? Damn you. Damn you!" The image of Ginny tried to strike Hermione, but her ghostly hand passed through the witch.

"No!" Hermione screamed, almost losing her composure, and the bead shot a meter away before Harry could direct it back toward her.

As it neared her wand a third time, Hermione's black eyes faded to brown and she asked aloud, "What have I done?"

Her wand shattered and she collapsed onto the stone before the arch. Harry stepped forward, motioning with his hand. Gossamer wings tore from her back as the facsimile Cloak, rent and ruined, flew to his arm. A second gesture wrenched the Resurrection Stone off Hermione's hand and onto his outstretched palm.

"You may have possessed the Hallows, but you were _never_ their master. They were yours."

"What have I done?" she whispered, horrified.

Harry raised the Elder Wand, preparing to call down the fury of his station and strike his associate down in a pyre of black flame. Words older than mankind formed in his mind, an incantation that felt as natural to the young avatar as breathing.

He stopped upon seeing a solitary tear fall from her eye, a jewel catching the werelight. Hermione bowed her head, ready to accept her fate.

"No, I won't do this," he whispered, lowering his wand. "I can't do this..."

After a long pause, he walked past her and knelt before his deceased wife, placing a hand upon her forehead. His other hand touched the tiny brow of his deceased child. A moment later, a woman's silhouette appeared behind the Veil, holding a child.

Harry walked toward them, his black wings evaporating into motes of smoke. "For all your study, you never knew the true nature of the Hallows. They were never about bringing back the dead, but about righting the balance between this world and the next. The Hallows are about about death, nothing more, nothing less."

He stopped before the archway and opened his arms wide. The curtains parted and brilliant sunlight burst from within. Just on the other side of the Veil was Ginny, beaming at him with their child in her arms amidst a halo of light.

"She's got your eyes, love," she said, weeping with happiness. The last traces of the darkness haunting Harry vanished in an instant. His own eyes, green and vibrant, blinked back tears.

"I love you, Ginny."

Without taking his eyes off his beloved, Harry addressed Hermione once more. "I forfeit a life now to bring one back. Try to live, okay? Your husband loves you, as do your friends."

Hermione nodded meekly, her cheeks streaked with tears.

"Take care, Ron." Harry said.

Ron coughed and sat up. "No problem, mate. And thanks." His face was scrunched up in grief. "Take care of my sister, alright?"

Harry reached into the archway and took his his wife's hand in his. Then he stepped through.

Eyes closed, he inhaled deeply, then exhaled. He repeated this several times and, after a long pause, he said finally, "Peace."

"Come, Harry. Let's go meet your family." Ginny took his arm.

Harry placed a kiss upon her forehead and the two entered paradise together.


	3. Epilogue

"Well, I for one am glad you quit that awful Ministry job. You were working so hard there towards the end. It's a wonder you found any time for yourself at all," Molly said, setting a fresh mug of tea before Hermione. Its citrus smell was oddly comforting for the one-time academic.

With a weak smile, Hermione nodded to her mother-in-law. The year since Harry's and Ginny's passing had been difficult, the only consolations being that Arthur had survived his fall and that Ron, despite her actions and the lingering scars from the Tears of the Damned that marred her beauty, had stayed by her side. A secret, internal hearing at the Ministry declared her innocent by virtue of magical possession, but she could never erase the stain on her soul. She resigned her position on the spot--even if her husband and the Ministry didn't blame her, she knew she would never forgive herself.

Tears, like guilt, came easily to the witch these days.

Molly hummed as she worked a tart dough and Hermione glanced out the window at the trees swaying in the breeze. A sapling a year old stood beside Fred's. With trembling hands, she brought the steaming mug to her mouth.

"Oh, that reminds me..."

"Mmph." Hermione flinched, spilling hot tea onto her mouth and lap.

"Sorry dear." She handed Hermione a tea towel. "I have something of yours, I think." Molly went to a bureau and pulled out a small, leather tome.

Hermione's eyes widened. She had left the book when the had left the Ministry and she hadn't seen it since.

"I don't know how, but it just showed up here." She handed it to Hermione, whose shaking hands opened it automatically to the Tale of the Three Brothers.

"What a nice story," Molly said, reading over her shoulder. "It's too bad the Hallows are just a fairy tale. Wouldn't it be wonderful if they were real and could bring back my Fred?"

Hermione nodded, not trusting her voice.

"Now be a dear and go fetch me a tin of peaches. Ginny always likes cobbler on her birthday."

Fin.

* * *

A/N: Thanks to Alpha Fight Club for all their help in hammering this piece into shape. Special thanks go to BajaB, Scaryisntit, BennyS, Voice of the Nephilim, Nukular Winter, and japanese jew for their insightful comments and suggestions. I apologize for a non-canon element of the story: BennyS informed me that JKR did mention in an interview that the Elder Wand's core was Thestral hair. I felt a feather from the Angel of Death suited this story better, if making it slightly AU.


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